Today’s “What’s the Science??” is dedicated to the 2007 BET Awards. Due to my work schedule, I was unable to catch most of the program. I was, however, able to make a few observations:

• Monique was a good host, but not as strong as the last time.
• 50 Cent’s much-hyped performance was awful.
• How did Jennifer Hudson win the Best New Artist Award without an album?
• The Diana Ross tribute was great, especially Erykah Badu and Chaka Khan.
• Ciara was off the hook, as usual.
• Al Sharpton’s tribute to James Brown reminded me just how important Brown was to American culture and history.
• Are v-neck tshirts back in style? Mario was rocking one last night and Jamie Foxx was recently seen with one too. Just asking….

Since I wasn’t able to catch the bulk of the show, I need your help: Who had the best performances? Who made a fool of herself? Who looked the best? Whose awards speech went too long? Who got cheated out of an award?
WHAT’S THE SCIENCE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

Cheney and the Constitution
By Aziz Huq 

If it weren’t so frightening, the irony would be delicious: A Vice President who has done more than any other to push the envelope on executive privilege at the expense of the courts and Congress takes the position that his office has both legislative and executive functions so as to avoid accounting for the use of classified materials.

Any veneer of intellectual legitimacy that executive power defenders have caked on their vision of a monarchical executive evaporates in the glare of this naked opportunism. And the scope and nature of today’s constitutional crisis comes into clearer focus.

The term “constitutional crisis” is much abused, invoked generally whenever Congress shows some life. Confrontations on war funding and Congressional subpoenas, to cite recent examples, are in fact as old as the Republic. They are but healthy sparks from a constitutional confrontation of “ambition against ambition,” precisely as the Framers intended.

But the true crisis is hidden in plain sight–the existence of an office in the Constitution–the Vice President’s–with no real remit and no real limits, open to exploitation and abuse.

Consider as symptom number one Cheney’s claim to be neither lawmaker nor executive–and thus exempt from any scrutiny of his handling of classified documents. In 2003 President Bush signed an Executive Order 12958 requiring agencies and “any other entity” within the executive branch to report to a division of the National Archives on their classification and declassification activities. But since 2003 Cheney’s office has pointed to his position as president of the Senate to justify a refusal to comply. In May 2006 a Cheney spokesperson told Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune that the legal question had been “thoroughly reviewed.” And that was the end of the matter. Only now has Representative Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee begun to examine the Vice President’s failure to comply.

Second, Cheney’s argument makes no sense. The Vice President receives documents due to his executive policy-making role, not his position as Senate president. Not even Cheney has the chutzpah to claim he’s using these documents in his senatorial capacity: Outing covert CIA agents is apparently an executive function.

Third, if his office performs “legislative” functions, Cheney should be subject to the Senate’s strict rules for the handling classified documents. Since I doubt the Vice President would allow a Congressional sergeant-at-arms to enter his office, this in effect creates legal black hole (another one!) where classified documents can disappear without a trace.

Finally, Cheney’s argument is plainly a non sequitur. Why should addition of legislative duties trigger the subtraction of executive obligations? In lawyerly terms, the 2003 order applies to “any” entity within the executive branch. Having another label doesn’t stop Cheney from being one of those “any” entities.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

What happened to handwriting? What happened to privacy on a date? What happened to friends-of-friends? What happened to it not being so easy to pretend to be something we’re not?

Is Technology Bad for Relationships?
By Samantha Edwards 

Yesterday, at my corner bodega, the cashier was wearing a T-shirt that said, “You looked hotter on MySpace.” As far as I know, she doesn’t speak English. Last night, out on a date with one guy, I received a text from another and then answered it in the bathroom. (In fact, I have often taken to silencing my phone when I’m on dates because, when it rings, it always seems to provoke awkward questions. But, oops, not this time.) And a month ago, a bed-ridden friend of mine found out she’d spent a year in an online relationship with a person who literally did not exist.

I am not a Luddite. In fact, one of my favorite ways to simultaneously put guys in their place and turn them on is to casually respond to their blathering about home theater by mentioning I myself have a brand-new “1080p.” Stops ‘em dead in their tracks. But aside from that little dating trick (go ahead, steal it), I have to say, I’m not sure electronics have helped relationships.

We have so many great ways now to say what we mean, say how we’re feeling: We can write a text-message haiku or express regrets in a 5,000-word email or rekindle a flame by dropping in on an ex’s MySpace. But instead, we’re using our electronic options to lie more than anything. Whether it’s spending an hour crafting that five-line “totally casual” email, putting something “funny” for your birth date on MySpace, or Photoshopping your ex out of that photo (because your hair looks so good in it, natch) before posting it on Match.com, it’s all just so easy. How on earth was my date ever going to know I was standing on that toilet seat, waving my phone around like a madwoman trying to quickly find a better signal?

Not to mention all the new rules. As if we didn’t have enough rules for the poets to have been writing about them for centuries, we now have a whole new set for electronic communication. Take 24 hours to answer an email if you get one after a first date. Only sluts make bootycalls, but a well-crafted bootytext makes subtle art of the whole business (“Hey, you out? J ”). Never, ever, EVER put your real email on a dating site or MySpace or Friendster and especially not Facebook. (Yeah — just because he, too, went to Princeton, he’s not a psycho. Brilliant theory.)

What happened to handwriting? What happened to privacy on a date? What happened to friends-of-friends? What happened to it not being so easy to pretend to be something we’re not?

For the rest of the story, click here. 

Today’s photo of the day shows the often imitated, never duplicated Diana Ross and her family at the 2007 BET Awards. Last night, Ms. Ross was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented by all of her children.